


Never Let You Go

by The_Amarathine_Carrion



Series: Trans Felix AU [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Author is also Autistic and Trans, Coming of Age, Explicit Consent, Explicit Sexual Content, First Time, He’s also Autistic and Trans, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Virginity, Lots of language at the end my bad, M/M, Menstruation, Mention of drunkenness and alcohol, Misgendering, Modern day AU where Felix is an artist, Mutual Pining, NSFW content comes at the end, Porn with Feelings, Soft!Felix, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Trans Male Character, Trans Porn by Trans People, You Decide, no beta we die like Glenn, or Feelings With Porn, stream of conciousness, sylvix - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:27:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21863722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Amarathine_Carrion/pseuds/The_Amarathine_Carrion
Summary: He’s thirteen when his brother dies and it’s also when he realizes that what he feels for Sylvain is love.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Sylvain Jose Gautier/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Series: Trans Felix AU [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578751
Comments: 20
Kudos: 213





	Never Let You Go

Felix met Sylvain on his nineteenth day of first grade. 

It was during one of their breaks. He was coloring, off to the side. Felix liked to color, and he was good at it. Every day since he started school he brought a new picture home for his brother Glenn because it made him smile. Glenn would ruffle his hair and they’d play together and he’d add the picture to a binder he kept on his desk that was set aside especially for Felix’s drawings. 

He usually stayed in the corner of the room while he worked, face scrunched intensely, tongue flitting out the side of his mouth, as he concentrated carefully on keeping all of the color inside of the lines. It had been nice outside that day, though, and Felix wanted to lie down on his stomach near the grass while he patiently filled in the outline of Glenn’s favorite animal, a wolf. He started from the edges, black lines moving their way inward. His teacher told him that was the best way to color, and Felix listened, even if it did take forever to finish sometimes.

“Excuse me, Miss?” 

He blinks at the unfamiliar voice, frowning as he looks up and into a small round face with vibrant brown eyes and an animated smile. He’s crouching down on the ground only a few feet away, disturbing Felix’s zen-like environment and interrupting his favorite time of the school day. The boy’s hair is messy, the slightly bouncy waves swept in multiple directions, just a little too long to be tamed. It’s bright red. The color shining in the sun almost looks unrealistic. It reminds Felix of the clown he saw at Ingrid’s fifth birthday party. Felix didn’t like clowns.

Felix ignores him, returning to his project, uncomfortably aware that the boy has fully seated himself beside him on the edge of the grass. He leans in even closer, blinking down at the picture.

“I like your dog.” He says, pointing as if Felix didn’t know what he was talking about. “It’s black, like your hair.” 

Felix doesn’t understand why he won’t go away already. He looks at him now, the black crayon in his fist stills. “It’s a wolf.”

The boy smiles, cheeks crinkling the corners of his eyes. He looks at the wolf and then pointedly at Felix’s hair, still in a braid neatly plaited by Ingrid on their first break. “It’s a beautiful wolf. Black is a good color for it.” 

Felix blushes, though he’s not sure why. He feels a little angry; he can’t decide whether to tell the boy to go away or just leave himself. This is his spot, the perfect place he found for a day like this, and he doesn’t want to waste the rest of his time talking. He won’t get another break to finish coloring and he’s really excited to show this one to Glenn. 

The bell rings and Felix’s frown deepens. He had been so close. He puts his crayons away and gathers his things, hoping that the red haired distraction would be gone by the time he’s ready to walk back to his class. 

He wasn’t, though. 

Instead he stands over him, hand extended, towering even though he’s slightly bent forward. It’s another thing Felix doesn’t like, he’s always been small for his age and hates to be reminded of it. 

He stares at the hand for a few seconds, wondering if he should take it or not. The boy seems stubborn, and he probably won’t go away until he does. Felix doesn’t want to be late for class, Ingrid won’t like it. He sighs and allows the boy to pull him to his feet. His hand is warm and strong, easily bearing the weight of Felix and all of his school supplies.

“I’m Sylvain.” He laughs like it’s the funniest thing in the world. 

Felix realizes he’s supposed to say something in return. He’s not very good at this, too shy to have made any friends yet in his short debut at a real school, and Sylvain is kind of strange. 

“Felix.” He finally offers, only as he’s walking away, his face three fourths turned from Sylvain, amber eyes still somehow drawn to the glint of scarlet behind him. 

“Bye Felix!” Sylvain waves at him, seemingly unconcerned about the sound of the final bell. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Will you let me color with you then?” 

Felix says nothing else, wandering into class just as the teacher calls his name, more worried about Ingrid’s reprimanding eyes falling on him as he sits in his desk beside hers. 

He doesn’t see Sylvain again until the following week. By this time, he’s forgotten about him, his developing memory more focused on all the daily tasks he isn’t used to carrying out yet. He’s with Ingrid that morning, and a new girl whose name is Hilda. Hilda’s mom lets her dye her hair pink, even though she’s only a grade higher than them. She tells them that it washes out every night and she wakes up early to dye it again in the morning. She’s very pretty and delicate, nails perfectly painted and her flowing dresses kept immaculate through all their activities. 

They are not very alike at all. Felix is old enough to know that she is exactly the kind of girl that all girls should wish to be. He doesn’t though, and he’s already learned to bury the pain he sees in his parent’s eyes when he pulls on the same old sweaters and jeans and shirts that Glenn wore when he was his age. They should have a girl like Hilda. They wanted a sweet, outgoing, dolllike daughter to spoil, but instead they have a shy, socially inept son who spends too much time pouring his vivid imagination into his drawings. His room is full of pictures of kings, and wise old wizards, and black haired knights swinging swords at fearsome green dragons. 

Instead of their gender, he and Hilda bond over their shared interest in art. She compliments him on his coloring, and it makes him smile. She teaches him how to make flower crowns out of the daises and the dandelions that grow on the playground, and when he tells her that he’s not a girl she beams at him and says that he’s a prince and that it’s his coronet. 

Sylvain joins them as they are gathering more flowers for Ingrid, who told them that she doesn’t want a crown, she’d rather weave them into the the loose braid of her hair. It’s a bit silly to Felix, he’s sure they will just fall out, but he’s happy to help his friends who so easily accepted him.

“A couple of lovely crowns for two lovely princesses.” Sylvain greets them with a bow, an actual full out bow, like the withering grass around them is a throne room and he’s returned from a long journey desperate to see them again. 

Hilda giggles and curtsies back. Felix doesn’t know how she can so easily play along, but he supposes that’s part of the charm that drew him in as well. He squints at Sylvain, who is awaiting his response, still bent over, his face turned upward though, eyelashes blinking expectantly. 

“I’m a Prince.” Is all he can think of to say. He doesn’t like how deep those eyes can penetrate him. Like he can see what’s really buried in his heart, like he knows. 

Sylvain laughs again, loud and carefree, just like before. “Of course, my Prince.” He winks at Felix, who is unable to break eye contact like he usually does. “I’m at your service.”

Somewhere along the years that Felix knows Sylvain, they become close. Sylvain learns quickly that Felix is not joking about being a boy, and he immediately changes the way that he addresses him. It annoys Felix, that he doesn’t treat him the same way. He doesn’t want to be treated like a girl, of course not, but the implication that he is some strange kind of “other”, this grey area that deserves it’s own specific behavior pisses him off. Sylvain is touchy with everyone but him, it seems, always lingering close enough to Felix that he could if he wanted to, but chooses not to. Maybe he’s reading too far into it, Sylvain is probably just being accommodating to his preferences, but it’s frustrating all the same. 

Felix doesn’t like being touched, only initiates physical affection in rare circumstances, usually when there’s no other option. His brother still hugs him goodnight before they go to bed, even though he complains that he’s too old for it. Felix is the first to hug Glenn before he leaves for college, realizing that he doesn’t know how to replace the familiar comfort. 

He’s thirteen when his brother dies and it’s also when he realizes that what he feels for Sylvain is love.

Sylvain is finally touching him, holding him tightly on Felix’s bed as he sobs into his shoulder. A car crash, the hospital had said. It was so bad, he’d have to be cremated. They couldn’t give them a body intact enough to bury. 

It wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. His brother was so kind, so smart, so talented. A football virtuoso with a full ride scholarship. He still called Felix every week to talk to him, tell him jokes about the people he’s met there and the professors who seemed almost too ridiculous to be real. He always asked Felix about his own education and spoke praises about the drawings that Felix continued to mail to him, told him that he was amazing and had to keep going until he was old enough to get into a proper art college of his own that deserved a talented person like him.

He had called just yesterday about his most recent one, a watercolor painting of two wolves sitting side by side on a cliff howling at the moon, one dark as the midnight sky, the other the color of a fresh, scalding, burn. 

He must have known, Felix thought, the identity of those wolves. Felix had never talked to him about his sexuality. He swallowed it deep inside himself just like anything else. He’d never even told him he was trans, not even when he learned there was a name for years of the peristaltic feeling. He hadn’t needed to. Nobody had known him like his older brother had. 

He’d never considered this, children shouldn’t, they aren’t supposed to. Felix was no ordinary child, never was. He’s thought about death before, drawn it, colored the reaper black and silver, glowing coals of empty amber eyes. He’s thought about the afterlife, not of angels or of demons, not of some warm, bright, light, but of peace, the feeling of solitude there, Glenn grinning proudly at his newest creation and Sylvain’s arm around his waist on his left, the red wires of his halo brushing against Felix’s ear as he laughs into his neck.

Now he is here, buried in the planes of Sylvain’s freckled collarbones, and he is howling, not at the moon, but at all the stars which have fallen from the sky.   
  


* * *

  
Sylvain is good at comforting others; he always knows exactly what to do in each situation. For Felix, he knows not to speak much; words don’t mend him, same as they don’t break him. It’s rare for him to be quiet, but he knows how, and is often like that when he is alone. Most of the things he says he doesn’t mean, he only says them to some benefit. He’s careful around Felix, not to say too much of those kind of things, because the boy is tender to him— has been since the very first time he saw him drawing so solemnly on the grass. 

“I’m here for you, Felix. Whatever you need.” These are the only words he speaks, and Felix answers by pulling his body tighter around him, curling in his lap. Sylvain’s arms come to cradle Felix’s quivering head, pulling the few strands of hair left in his neglected bun free, coaxing the knots out gently while he hums a song his mother used to sing him to sleep before she got too sick to leave her bed. 

Before long, Felix calms, his face dipping further into Sylvain’s chest as he surrenders to rest. Even in sleep his wrists are locked in a death grip around Sylvain’s neck, and while it might be possible to free himself without waking Felix, he lifts him slowly instead, pulling back the covers to lower them both underneath the layers, and nuzzles closer into the milky white teen’s raven head. He kisses it, once, before closing his eyes and relaxing into a relieved sigh, hoping that when Felix wakes it won’t be to the thrashing of anger, only grief.

It’s a decision that sparks a course of changes. Sylvain hadn’t meant to drift off himself, just to stay in the embrace a little longer, relishing the touch of his best friend he so often didn’t even admit to himself that he wanted. He woke up to neither anger or grief, no thrashing of any kind, just the small shy blush of the boy as he stared directly into his eyes, their faces millimeters apart. 

  
“Ahhh! I’m sorry, Felix. _Damn_..” He stutters and tries to pull his face away. Felix’s wrists are still there in that vice grip though, and Sylvain has always been stronger than him but right now he feels weak and lightheaded at the sudden proximity of Felix’s unusually focused glare. He is the first to avert his eyes for once. “I know you don’t like being touched. I just didn’t want to wake you up.”

Felix’s breath is a hot exhale on his neck. “ S’okay.” He mumbles, the vibration under Sylvain’s jawline sending a shiver of electricity down his spine. “I needed you.” Had he moved himself even closer when Sylvain turned his face away? 

Sylvain is reddening, unsure of whether or not to be grateful that Felix cant see anything while he’s buried his face into his neck, even as that’s the problem plaguing him. This wasn’t his intention at all. He’d kept his feelings for Felix well under wraps and controlled for years now, aware that he was, among other reasons, too young for him. Felix was too innocent to understand what he was doing to him right now, curled completely against his body, telling Sylvain he needed him, seeking the touch that he so often evaded. 

He feels arousal stirring in him and knows he has to get away before Felix notices, but at the same time Felix begins to tremble in his arms and there is the presence of hot tears falling on his collarbones once more. _Shit_. He said he’d be there for him, there’s no way he could leave him like this. 

Instead, he wraps his arms around Felix’s back, chin resting on the crown of his head, and hums again. His voice is cracking, even through his closed lips— from the awkward progression of puberty or his quickening emotions, he doesn’t know. Felix shakes and shakes in his arms and Sylvain feels as if he might unravel with him. He mutters a mixture of unintelligible attempts at sentences, the only words Sylvain can make out are the most repetitive, his own name among Glenn’s in the wracking whimpers that are shattering them both into pieces he’s at a loss of how to repair. 

He loves Felix. But his love is no good, not the kind of love Felix deserves to have, not the kind of love that he needs now— probably not ever.

Sylvain is good at comforting others. He’s good at being the kind of person everyone needs. It’s because that’s what he himself needs, to be valuable. Felix doesn’t use him that way though, he never accepts any of his offers, seeing them for exactly what they are. He knows that about Sylvain, and today he tells him he still needs him here, he still stays. 

He allows himself to believe that’s all it takes, for him to truly feel loved.   
  


* * *

  
Puberty is a nightmare for Felix, and it comes soon, too soon after the trauma of Glenn’s passing, almost as if that black and silver reaper continues to mock him from those hollow resin sockets— an extra punishment, a cruelty for continuing to live like this. 

He awakens only a few days later to a sticky mess between his thighs, soaking into the sheets of his bed. “ _The blood of life”,_ some crackpot preacher he had heard on the T.V. once said. To Felix, blood would only ever mean death. He hides it at first, so accustomed to dealing with private matters on his own, but eventually his mother finds the sheets before he can wash them in time and makes a fuss about it. He refuses to hold a conversation with her, having already looked ahead about only the information he needed to know to care for himself. 

Within a year he is unable to ignore his developing body in Glenn’s old clothes. He is still skinny and small, but his smooth skin and soft hair and the slight curve to his hips and chest are so unlike the rugged handsomeness of his brother, the person he always wished to grow up into. 

It is too much to bear, so he folds them carefully and puts them away, high and deep into his closet where no one but himself knows they exist. He cuts his hair to just above his shoulder, long enough that his parents won’t complain as much, but not too long that he can’t pull it back like some of the other boys he’s seen at the high school he’ll be attending soon. 

Sylvain is there, keeping good to his promise, graduating a few years before him, and despite their age gap that would make most teenage boys deny their younger friends, he heartily embraces him. He takes Felix to get his first binder, helps him to doctor’s appointments to set up blockers and prepare for testosterone shots as he approaches his 18th birthday, and when the wisps of darkening hair finally, _finally_ , make their appearance on Felix’s face, Sylvain teaches him how to shave. He’s the closest person in Felix’s life now, and he’s nothing like his brother was, if he were here to help him, but it’s different, and it’s different in a good way. 

Felix wants to kiss him, wants to tell him how deeply in love he’s fallen with him over the years, but knows his reputation. He’s a playboy, a different girl on his arm at every occasion— never a second date. It’s double his mistake for falling for a straight man. “That Gautier’s no good,” he’d hear people say. “He’s a selfish, egotistical, _dangerous_ , kind. You don’t want to get involved with someone like him.” 

And there is some truth to that. Sylvain isn’t perfect. He doesn’t own up to most of his mistakes. He hardly changes. People who don’t know him think his dishonesty is some sudden cruelty, rather than something he wears constantly to shelter his insecurities. He’s talented, but too afraid to do something with it, preferring to be known as an ass and a piece of ass than rejected for the person he actually is. 

Felix can see his secrets. Some of them he was trusted with. Others he came across and swore he’d never tell. One of them was a gift he’d never expected, when Felix got his first acceptance letter to an art college from a list that Glenn had recommended to him so long ago. An easel, handcrafted from Felix’s favorite pine, glossy and proud, as handsome as the man who made it. Sylvain had laughed softly when Felix crushed him in a hug as he presented it, refusing to answer his questions about how long it had taken to make or how much it cost him. 

He stayed in that embrace perhaps a little longer than he meant to. Sylvain’s laughter turned into a steadying cadence of breath that tickled his forehead while he waited for Felix to say what was bothering him. 

“Part of me doesn’t want to leave.” He admits into the crook of Sylvain’s neck, the holy altar where he makes all of his confessions. Sylvain’s arms tighten around his back, shouldering more of his weight. “It’s the same town Glenn was in when he..” He breaks off with a deep breath, not wanting his voice to betray his emotions just yet. “What if I don’t make it back?” 

Sylvain’s palms are hot, as always, at the bottom of his neck. “You will.” He tells Felix, with a conviction that the younger man doesn’t hear very often. “You owe it to yourself to go, Lix. You owe it to yourself to live.” 

Felix shudders at that and continues to be honest, fearing that it may be his last chance.“I don’t want to be alone there..walking the same streets where he died.”

Sylvain inhales deeply, and pushes Felix away, still gripping his shoulders. His smile is as easygoing as ever, but his eyes are full of an unrecognizable emotion. 

“You won’t be alone, Felix. I’m going with you.”

And go he does, despite Felix’s many protests. _You have a life here_ , he argues. _People who care about you, friends and family._ He even brings up all the dates with women he’s yet to meet. Sylvain laughs at that, full bodied and slightly soured. _Those women will do just fine without me,_ he assures Felix, _It’s better for everyone when the temptation isn’t there._

He doesn’t know _he’s_ the temptation that has followed Felix constantly since he was thirteen. A fire that dances just out of his reach— a crimson oblivion that his heart begs him to run straight into. 

The end of summer comes sooner than either men realize, and before they know it, they find themselves in an unfamiliar city. Sylvain’s excitement is more palpable than Felix’s, which reveals itself in a nervous seclusion. All of the classes he chooses for his first semester are online, as well as his work, preferring to focus on his art outside of academia while he adjusts to the major social shift. He locks himself away in their room when Sylvain goes to his bartending job every night, usually working on some new commission if he’s not finishing his homework, rarely able to create what he wants.

He wonders if it was right to give in and allow Sylvain to come here. They can’t afford to have separate rooms and he’s always so tired when he comes home to find Felix still wide awake, tongue sticking out in that same way he’s always needed it to in his intensive concentration. Felix becomes more and more distant from him, stress making him unavailable even as he sits not three feet away from Sylvain on his own bed.

Like everything else, he denies it, when Felix corners him, asking if he has any regrets. 

“I like coming home to see you working so hard. I try to imagine what kind of colors you’re going to use, but I never quite get it right when I finally see them. There’s always something new to look forward to at the end of every shift.” 

He doesn’t tell Sylvain that the colors are never right to him, no matter how many times he tries mixing them, because he can’t figure out how to create the exact shade of red that hangs, abundant and bewitching, from his head.

All of those things, the words that have been building up skyscrapers hundreds of feet tall within him, might have remained unsaid, but as fate would have it the series of changes continue. Felix seems to have more of those than the average person does. He’s given up trying to discover why.

The most important of these happens over the winter break. Sylvain comes home wasted one night, so late that it is nearly morning. He’s not supposed to drink on the job and his shift usually ended hours ago so Felix guesses he must have found some other bar that’s open even later than his. He’s giggling stupidly, swaying in the hall when Felix is forced to leave his current commission to open the door because the dumbass left his wallet and his keys. 

Felix rolls his eyes and groans, helping Sylvain into the room, making sure he’s settled on the bed before moving to put his supplies away. Good thing he’s ahead of schedule since Sylvain is a needy drunk, always clamoring for his attention even if all he ends up doing is mumbling incoherently at Felix while absentmindedly stroking his hair. 

“Feliiiix.” Sylvain whines, right on schedule. “C’mover ear.”

He sighs and walks back to Sylvain’s outstretched arms. As if there was anywhere else for him to go. 

Sylvain coos contentedly, his head finding a comfortable spot on Felix’s chest. He’s wearing a loose oversized T shirt— one of Sylvain’s old ones actually. He’s also unbound at the moment; it’s difficult to work for very long in a binder and he’ll lose track of time, which he learned the hard way is dangerous. It’s a mild discomfort he can ignore for the sake of a silent inebriated Sylvain. 

Sylvain notices it though, his head turning a bit in confusion in his intoxicated state. His lips are parted already as he breathes heavily through his mouth and he accidentally brushes them against an erect nipple.

Felix freezes, a short exhale of shock all that his body seems capable of doing. Sylvain’s brows are furrowed, his eyes barely able to remain focused but he’s somehow able to continue looking puzzled as he brings his hand up to cup at the other side of his chest.

He squeezes at the same time his tongue extends to firmly poke at his previous discovery and Felix feels as if his entire world could come crashing down and be put together again at the very same moment.

“Sylvain..” Felix hisses lowly, too afraid to use his full voice for the possibility he could break. “..what are you doing?” 

Sylvain merely nuzzles his head more affectionately against his chest, turning his face completely inward so all of the words he says are even more unintelligible. “S’warm..” Felix manages to make out. “Soft..you smell nice.” He twists a fist around the copious fabric gathered at Felix’s waist, lifting it so his arm is grazing by his navel around his hipbone. “Like seeing you’n my shirt.”

Felix’s heart is like a jackhammer, beating so furiously against Sylvain’s forehead that he half expects it to bounce away with each thundering pulse. Sylvain sighs, humming into a smile, and then he turns his lips to find the center of that traitorous heartbeat to give it a soft, sloppy kiss.

Felix’s eyes almost shoot to the back of his skull at the intimate implication. “Stop it.” He hears himself say through ears that are waterlogged with desire, and heartbreak, and just about a decade of buried hope. “You’re drunk.” 

Sylvain laughs. “I am.” He admits. “But’yur always thatadway.”

Felix’s face fully flushes, unable to stop his body from shaking in Sylvain’s licentious hold. He doesn’t know what to do, never imagined being talked to or touched like this, as many years as he’s had to fantasize about it. Sylvain isn’t thinking straight, probably confusing his body with some girl he shacked up with recently, the memory at the forefront of his based mind. The thought grounds him a little. Felix doesn’t blame him, he’s never been unbound in front of Sylvain before since he’s needed it, and it was his fault that he’s already right there pressed against them. 

“Let me go.” He tells him, trying to disentangle himself from the lecher— gently at first, because he’s aware that right now he’s capable of hurting them.

“Never.” Sylvain’s eyes are fully open now and he’s looking up at him with a remarkable coherence. Sweat has swept his usual messy hair into a tornado effect. “Never let you go.” He repeats, slowly, as if he’s considering the weight of every syllable. 

Felix gulps, and tears his eyes away from the mystifying sight. He pushes Sylvain down, hard enough this time to break their connection, and is quick to pull the covers over his protesting arms. Sylvain’s whines falter soon after Felix shuts the door behind him. He slides to his knees, hugging himself tightly as he trembles and does his best to ignore the unquenchable heat pulsing between his thighs.

He sleeps on the couch that night; at least, he tries to get more than a few minutes in before he finally gives up when the sun is high in the sky and he hears the grumbling of a hungover Sylvain making his way to the toilet. 

He should get up and help him, but he doesn’t want to. No sleep and the electricity that’s made it’s home in Felix’s skeleton after last night’s episode makes him want to avoid the man for what feels like the rest of his life. Not a very solid plan for two people who live with one another and share the same bedroom. 

_He probably doesn’t even remember._ Of all the hopeful strings to hang on to, it seems the weakest, but it’s the best case scenario for Felix. He doesn’t know if he’s capable of handling a Sylvain who was serious about his advances, and neither would he survive if he was joking or regretful. After listening to Sylvain’s coughs and retches for a few minutes, he finally decides to get up and bring him a cup of water.

 _You don’t have to stay_. He promises himself. _Just hand him the cup and that’s it._

But when he reaches the bathroom he knows he’s fucked, because Sylvain is curled miserably over the toilet bowl, pathetic face pleading for Felix’s help and there’s nothing in the world that could make Felix turn away from the sight of it. 

He is also stark naked. 

_There are so many more freckles on his back,_ Felix observes, as he rubs circles into it with one hand, the other still holding the glass of water close enough to Sylvain’s face that he could tip it into his mouth at a moment’s notice. Sylvain moans gratefully and fairly soon after appears to be done, straightening enough to sip cautiously. 

“God, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you Felix.” He gasps, and places the half full cup on the ground.

Felix feels like he could stammer if he speaks so he only nods at first, allowing Sylvain the opportunity to realize that he has no clothes on. 

“Whoops.” He rearranges himself and scratches at the back of his head, a little embarrassed. “Not sure how that happened.”

“You were fully clothed when I put you to bed.” Felix offers simply. A pause, and then he continues, still nervous to breach the subject. “What do you remember?” 

He grimaces. “Not much. I couldn’t find my wallet when I woke up so I’m pretty sure I lost it.” 

Felix lets out a small sigh of relief. “You did lose it.” He scowls at Sylvain, but the sides of his mouth are slightly upturned in amusement. “And your keys. Idiot.” 

Sylvain chuckles and paws at Felix’s arm in a poor attempt of an apology. “Tell me the name of the bar you went to and I’ll call them as soon as they’re open.” Felix says as he stands and turns to leave.

“Errrr..” He hears Sylvain struggling behind him. “About that..”

 _Of course_. He can’t give him anything, can he? Nothing, yet everything all at once. “I’ll figure it out.” He says, and leaves the door open in case it proves to be too wobbly a task for Sylvain’s galaxy brain to handle. 

_I always do._

Felix opens a new tab on his laptop and begins his search for all the phone numbers of the local bars. He can hear Sylvain brushing his teeth noisily in the background, because everything he does has to draw attention to himself— or maybe it just seems that way to Felix’s foolish, lovesick heart. He tries not to listen to the sound of Sylvain singing in the shower as he makes the calls. He calls six different places before he finds the one Sylvain went to.

He almost doesn’t make it through that call, because that bar is the only gay bar in their small town.

His thoughts are racing as he tries to piece information from the past few months together. Felix was certain it would be a hassle living with Sylvain in having to enforce ground rules for the courtesy code of having women over, but all it took was one two minute conversation and he hadn’t so much as seen or heard a single one since they moved. It’s not like Sylvain hadn’t come home late or drunk before, and Felix just gratefully assumed that he was hooking up with them after his shift, using their place instead of his. Sometimes, Sylvain would come home smelling not just like alcohol, but sweat and musk and a cologne that wasn’t his, but bars were smelly places, and Sylvain must come into contact with near to hundreds of people a night during his shifts.

He had never before considered the idea that women weren’t the only gender Sylvain was interested in. 

His face is red, and he doesn’t know why. This doesn’t change anything. After all, he’s obviously the same way, has been for a long time. He knew it when he kissed Hilda for the first time in 7th grade and liked it, but also felt like he wanted more. He knew it when Linhardt ran his hands down the back of his neck and left marks on his collarbone that caused him to pull one of Glenn’s old sweaters out of it’s hiding spot years after, even though it was approaching the height of summer. 

Still, it was a shock, because it was Sylvain, and Sylvain never gave off any indication that he’d be interested in men. He was always prattling on about women. It was as much a part of his personality as it was his preference at this point. Felix wasn’t brazen enough to claim he knew all of Sylvain’s secrets, but this wasn’t one he’d ever foresaw coming. 

He remembers two things now, with clarity. The first being last night, when Sylvain brushed his face, his hands, his _tongue_ , against Felix’s chest, and Felix thought it was because he thought he was one of his girls. He realizes now he was wrong. Sylvain has always respected him, supported him, listened even all the way back when they were children and barely knew how the world worked. Felix knows he doesn’t see him as anything other than the man he is. 

The second, was barely a month after they moved in. They were still figuring out furnishing the apartment, just started working and replenishing their savings, which had mostly gone to the deposit and first month’s rent. Until then they’d slept on two separate cots, many feet apart from another. It had been fine, up until the moment when it suddenly wasn’t and Sylvain decided that he needed to scoot himself closer to Felix in order to sleep. 

“What are you doing?” He remembers himself asking, annoyed at what the presence of Sylvain’s chest, scorching like an ancient brick oven, was doing to the warmth spreading throughout his own body.

“Can’t sleep knowing that you’re over there.” Sylvain’s answer is drowsy, betraying his words. He reaches over Felix and makes to grab at his hand. Felix swats it away, a snarky comment burning to be released from his snarling lips, but he stills as Sylvain rests his head on the crook of his neck and breathes slowly, evenly, obviously on the cusp of sleep. 

“I’m so proud of you, Fe.” He exhales the praise directly into Felix’s ear, making him shiver. Sylvain chuckles at the response like the bastard that everyone knows he is, and Felix has half a mind to kick backwards at him, perhaps between his legs if he can reach far enough, but he can’t and he doesn’t, so he lays there and does his best not to shake as he feels the wanting between his legs intensify.

“Go to sleep Sylvain.” Is all he says, and hypocrite that he is, he lies awake for what seems like hours after Sylvain does. Sylvain gropes for his hand again as he is dreaming, and Felix allows him to lace them together, mind blank, heart on fire, body split between the physical and the celestial. He finds something in the draping of their fingers, something that was enough to pull him away from his contradictory consciousness, when nothing else could.

Felix finally allows himself to settle into the memories of all the times that Sylvain has suggested he cares for him in a way that’s a little more than normal for a friend. He gets it now, whatever happened last night, Sylvain meant it. 

The sounds of Sylvain’s shower show stop, and Felix is unable to tear his eyes away from the still open doorway. There is so little separating him from a naked, wet Sylvain that _wants_ him— wants him as Felix has wanted him for years. His throat is dry thinking about it. 

“Felix?” Sylvain calls, as if he’s sure to be listening, as if he knows all of his current thoughts are of him. “Could you bring me a towel? Sorry, I forgot.” 

_A towel_. He wants him to bring a towel. Yeah, he can do that.

Felix is hardly positive he’s still breathing as he walks woodenly to the cupboard by the bathroom to retrieve the towel. Sylvain calls his name again, but he is far beyond the point of an adequate response. His entire body is beating with the instinct of _walk forward, keep going,_ but as to what destination, he can’t really say. He can’t catalog anything beyond the buzzing between his ears. 

Sylvain peeks out of the side of the curtain, relieved at Felix’s entrance. “Thanks Fe. I thought you didn’t hear me.” 

His sprightly red hair is damp and dark, plastered to the sides of his neck and face. His goofy grin makes his appearance more akin to a 50’s horror movie than a modern day man. It looks ridiculous. He’s never looked more beautiful in his life. 

Felix continues to walk forward, slowly, towel clutched tightly in hands raised to his chest. “I heard you.”

He’s close enough for Sylvain to reach for the towel but there is something he must see in Felix that stops him, because instead he leans forward only slightly and cocks his head to the side. “Are you alright?”

 _Is he alright_? The question of the century. A question that could take seconds or hours or even days to answer before it wound up right back where it started. He answers Sylvain with a question of his own.

“Do you want to know what happened when you came home last night?” 

Sylvain sucks in his next breath, eyes already admitting to some unnamed crime, his grip on the curtain a little less centered. “God, Felix...Did I hurt you?”

Another loaded question. Something they could talk about later if they still needed to. Yet Felix always was a man that appreciated actions over words, even if the thought of said actions left his body clenched up in a way that made him want to dislocate all of his ribs so he could tear his lungs free from the cage.

“I don’t know yet.” He says. “I’m about to find out.” 

He tosses the towel to the side and uses one hand to yank back the shower curtain, the other grasping Sylvain’s wrist, which has instinctually moved to cover his crotch. He steps forward to the edge of the shower at the same time he pulls Sylvain down toward him, so that he’s nearly kneeling, his face once again brushing against his chest. It’s a testament to Sylvain’s shock that he comes so easily, and only gasps when Felix’s hand moves yet again to hold him there. 

“It started like this..” Felix’s voice is already hoarse with hunger. He tugs Sylvain’s palm open from the fist it’s shaped itself into, shaking, placing it under his left breast. “And then this..” He squeezes his own hand over Sylvain’s as firmly as he can. Sylvain heaves, shifting his face upward to gaze at Felix, wide eyed and open mouthed, as if he were his god. 

Felix maintains the eye contact, pupils widening as equally as the man who’s teetering against him. “Then..” and he is unable to prevent a tiny whine from leaving his lips, “You did this.” He wraps Sylvain’s fist around his shirt again, lifting it, dragging the cool wet arm across his navel, shivering at the contact, praying for the first time in his life that something out there would take pity on him when Sylvain’s moan ripples across all the nerves in his body and tears through all of the fibers of the barricades he had left.

“Felix..” Sylvain gasps. “I’m sorry..I..”

“Did you mean it?” He cuts off any excuse Sylvain was going to try and use, the fire in his body roaring to a raging inferno that would not be sated by anything but the complete truth. 

“I…I..” The usually slick tongued fox is reduced to ashes in Felix’s phoenix flame, unable to do more than wheeze and gawk at his bold behavior.

“When you said I smelled nice...that you liked me in your shirt...that you’d never let me go...Were those just more of your empty words, Sylvain?” 

“Felix...” he says again, the name like an incantation— like he’s trying to summon the very thing he wants that’s already right there before him. “ _Felix_...”

Felix cups the sides of Sylvain’s face, stepping back and bringing it to his exact eye level. “Well?” He asks, with a tone of finality, “Were they?” 

There is a second of doubt that passes Felix by as he registers the fear in Sylvain’s eyes and mistakes it for reluctance instead of yearning, but then some invisible something seems to click into place and Sylvain is brushing the tip of his nose against his, eyelashes drawn downward as the billows of his lungs finally leave enough space to form something other than the whisper of Felix’s name. 

“No. I meant it.”

Felix’s lips are already impatient, ghosting at the corner of Sylvain’s mouth when he gives his response. 

“Then show me.” 

And suddenly he is in the air, Sylvain’s arms like a life jacket in a sea of passions realized nearly 10 years in the making. Felix gasps in the collision of lips and tongue and teeth and the firm feeling of Sylvain’s hands searching him for all the hidden riches of his body. It shouldn’t have surprised him so. He knew Sylvain’s hands were strong and capable from the moment he lifted him off of the ground at the age of six, but thirteen years is a long enough time to allow for improvement, and it’s the difference between a few feet in the air to the moon.   
  
Sylvain nearly slams him against the wall, hands tearing at the collar of his shirt, sucking and biting hard at the skin underneath. He growls when Felix wraps his legs around him tighter, begging him not to stop, and snakes a hand underneath to drag his fingers across Felix’s abdomen. 

He’s hard, rubbing just under Felix’s thighs, and even with the loose sweatpants he slept in in the way of the friction Felix is positive he could find his peak if Sylvain were to direct it just a little closer to his center. He bears down pointedly on it, giving a plaintive cry, and the towel lies forgotten on the cold bathroom tile as Sylvain dries himself through Felix’s clothing instead. 

“ _Bed_ ” One of them is able to groan; he doesn’t know who, it doesn’t matter. Sylvain shifts him higher, moving out of the bathroom, still focused intensely on marking Felix’s neck and running his hands over his dampening body.

The sheets are still a mess from Sylvain’s drunken tossing and turning but Felix doesn’t care. Sylvain lowers him a bit more gently on the side and sweeps all of the more offensive bedding onto the floor before advancing again, eyes dark, and huge, and hungry. 

He reaches for Felix’s hair now, snapping it free from his half ponytail and making sure it’s out of the way before he pushes at Felix’s chest so that he’s lying supine and Sylvain is close to straddling him. He cradles Felix’s jaw with one hand, teasing at the rim of his sweatpants with the other. 

“Fuck, I want you.” He pants, curling his fingers even tighter into the sweats when Felix twists upwards at his confession. “I want.. _God_ , _Felix..._ can I?” 

Felix nods vigorously, his eyes hazed over with the vision of Sylvain shaking and whining above him like a starved animal. “ Take them off.” He pleads. “Please.” 

Sylvain makes quick work of his pants, then his underwear and before he knows it, there are fingers softly teasing the wetness of his folds, his breath quickening when they move to rub up and down his swollen cock. 

“ _Fucking_...don’t you _dare_ stop doing that.” He gasps at Sylvain, already a molten mess underneath the clever movements of his hand. Sylvain grunts and continues to pleasure Felix, eventually bringing his other hand to play with the precum dripping out of his own head. 

Felix is hungry for it, watches the careful, specific, action through eyes glazed over with indulgence. He starts to focus less on the searing space between his thighs and more on the parched feeling he’s developing in his throat at the sight of Sylvain’s thick cock, so close to his body, yet too far still from all the places his mind is telling him he needs it to be. 

“Sylvain.” He’s quiet, at first; too quiet to be heard over the noises and the concentration Sylvain is exerting as he stares down while he’s working their sex.

“Sylvain.” He says a second time, louder, more demanding, a touch of desperation causing Sylvain to raise his head in concern and slow into a stop.

“Is this okay?” He asks, and Felix groans in frustration, want aching in him even fiercer now that they’ve interrupted their cadence. 

“Yes. It’s good. I didn’t want you to stop.” He spits out, chest heaving as he finally gives in and removes his shirt, soaked with sweat and the aftermath of Sylvain’s shower. Sylvain’s eyes are cautious as he searches the newest area of exposed skin.

“Goddamnit stop looking at me like that. I can tell you like my body. You don’t need to hold back.”

Sylvain sighs deeply as he runs his fingers over the arch of mottled bruising he left so recently all around Felix’s collarbone and neck. “I do.” He almost chokes as he says it. “I love it.” His eyes are misty when he brings them into Felix’s own swimming vision. “I…I love _you_.” 

Felix sucks in a rattled breath and clings so tightly to Sylvain’s arms that he thinks he draws blood with his fingernails. “What did you just say?” 

“I love you.” He says again, more confident the second time around. He hikes Felix’s thighs up and moves himself forward until their foreheads are touching and he can breathe the three words into the junction of their lips. 

“I...do too.” Somehow he can’t manage the weight of just those three short words, his body breaking under the simple velvet pressure of Sylvain’s responding kiss. Felix doesn’t know when he started crying, but he tastes it now, the extra salt mixing with the sweat, making him feel like he’s at the mercy of that ocean again. 

“ _God.._ ” Sylvain whispers when they part, “I...don’t even know what to do.”

That confession from Sylvain, the man who considers himself so sexually confident that it rewrites the textbook definition of egoism, that he is so lost in Felix he is rendered useless and wrecked and hesitant, sparks a strong desire in the younger man once more, and Felix decides he must once again take the reins. 

“I want..” He says, as he reaches down to grasp Sylvain’s still throbbing cock, “this.” 

Sylvain cries out, his hips trembling to stay in place and he bites his lip as Felix begins to play with him the way he studied Sylvain doing it before. Felix’s own lips are responding to his arousal, parting to allow his tongue to moisten them before he wraps them around the place where his fingers cease to tease.

“ _Feliiiix_.” Sylvain sighs, threading his fingers through his hair and pushing him down just a little further. Felix moves experimentally, moaning at the feeling of finally finding the oasis in that desert which settled earlier in the back of his throat. 

“Fuck..I don’t..wanna come like this.” Sylvain pants, holding Felix tightly, not allowing him to chase his pleasure with full abandon like he knows they both want to. Felix pops off— a thin trail of saliva leading from his pink flushed lips to Sylvain’s still leaking cock. 

“Then how?” He asks, low and more than a bit frustrated.

Sylvain averts his eyes, an extra blush staining his cheeks as his cock freely twitches at an idea he’s hesitating to share. 

Felix thinks he knows what it is, and he laughs, loud and lightweight, so very similar to the man he loves sitting right before him.

“You want to fuck me, Gautier?” He teases, spreading his legs and dragging two fingers to open his folds, presenting himself to his lover. He’s never done it, never considered he’d be with a person who made him feel comfortable enough. 

But this is Sylvain, and now, he _wants_ it. The thought excites him, his heat throbbing and pulsing around nothing but air, aching to be filled. 

Sylvain’s entire body shudders and he fists at the loose sheets. “Yes.” He admits, turning even a shade darker of red, like his damp hair has somehow crept to encompass his entire face. “I want to. So bad.”

Felix grins, sits up and wraps his arms around Sylvain’s neck. He kisses him, and adjusts his cock so it is weeping now, right over his entrance. “What are you waiting for, then?”

Sylvain is already undone, shaking from the effort of restraint, but he wants to make sure he has Felix’s explicit permission before they proceed with something he’s pretty sure Felix hasn’t experienced before.

He assumes a position that could easily go either way, and laces one of his hands in Felix’s. “Tell me you want to first.” 

Felix smiles, but he rolls his eyes all the same, “Are you really so egotistical that you need to hear me say it like that? Of course I want to, you goddamned idiot. Wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.”

It’s Sylvain’s turn to laugh, because of course Felix would find some way to reassure him and insult him in the same sentence. It’s all the green light he needs. He’s quick to lay Felix back down and maneuver his thighs even further apart, but slow and gentle when he eases inside, inch by inch.

Felix blinks back tears and fails to swallow his shaky breaths as he adjusts to the stretch that’s still burning his insides even with how wet he is and how careful Sylvain is being. He claws at his chest in agony, everything within him wanting Sylvain to go faster, harder, _now_. He’s waited so long, _too long_ , for this moment— they both have. 

Sylvain is there to help him in his patience though, brushing his fingers up and down his thighs as he holds him, kissing around the crown of his head, and whispering words of praise and encouragement— words that actually hold power and meaning for Felix now. Eventually, he bottoms out, and Felix clenches hard around him at the feeling, making both men moan appreciatively. 

“God damn it Felix..you’re so fucking tight.” Sylvain’s eyes are closed, mouth in a grimace that almost suggests he’s in pain. Felix clenches again at this, and Sylvain hisses into a long exhale, head tilting up like he could ascend to heaven at any moment if it wasn’t for the debaucherous activity they were currently engaging in. 

He’s still motionless inside him, and it’s doing nothing to sate the fire that still burns there. “Move.” Felix begs him, running a hand from Sylvain’s shoulder down to his wrist. “Please.” Sylvain obliges with a single roll of his hips and Felix gasps, eyes creeping upward toward the ceiling. He repeats the motion, twice, three times, a fourth, and a fifth, until he finds a steady pace that makes Felix whine repetitively and curl his toes. 

“Please look at me.” Sylvain urges him, gentle hand by Felix’s chin to adjust his gaze down from his spot on the ceiling. Felix does, willing himself to focus on the feeling of Sylvain’s cock filling him in all the right places, and he finds that it isn’t uncomfortable at all, it’s actually better. 

Sylvain’s eyes are full of adoration and the smile on his face is real. He knows it in the same way that Sylvain knows him. They have eyes that were made to seek out one another, to be together in the dark and the light of their lives. Sylvain places a hand over Felix’s erratic heart and snaps his hips deeper and faster, as if he was trying to match the furious pounding.

The pain of the unfamiliar stretch is gone now, and all that is left is something that feels so good, so complete, so easy, that Felix wonders why the hell he hadn’t done this with Sylvain sooner. When Sylvain slows, in favor of working deep and sensual strokes, Felix pulls at his own hair in the torture and quickly learns that he can fuck him right back like this, twisting and snapping his hips downward in a way that makes Sylvain erupt into guttural curses that snake down his spine and shake their bodies where they are connected.

The heat is pooling, greater and lower, rearing like a mighty wave, and Felix is both so desperate to have it come and yet wishing they could stay forever rising and falling like this. “I’m close.” He tries to warn Sylvain—tries to—but it comes out in a pathetic sob that’s really just him saying _please, finish me._

Sylvain chuckles darkly, sticking his thumb and forefinger in his mouth, then lowering it to rub furiously at Felix’s forgotten cock, slick and pulsing under his unrelenting touch. 

“Fuck!” Felix screams, head and shoulders raising as he can’t help but to gravitate more toward the source of his ecstasy. “Yes.. _Yes Sylvain_!” He thrashes his head around as he falls back on the sheets, unable to find a proper way to prepare for the release of tension that is coming. 

“That’s it Felix..let me hear you.” Sylvain croons at him, but it isn’t long before both of their panting and moaning intensifies to the point where nothing more can be said. 

Felix sees white twice, first, when his orgasm rips through him like a hurricane without warning, and a second time when Sylvain pulls out of him with a sudden gasp and shoots his seed across Felix’s stomach. He collapses by Felix’s side, barely able to avoid falling on his own semen in his exhaustion. 

Felix is still trembling long after Sylvain has gathered enough of his breath to reach over and wipe themselves clean with one of their old blankets. Now that it’s over, he’s nervous that they’ll have some awkward conversation about it and maybe he’s just fucked up the only good, genuinely deep, relationship in his life, but god it wasn’t fair to be faced with a situation like that and he’d had to do _something_. 

Sylvain seems to know exactly what’s on his mind though, seeing through him even as Felix turns his back to him and curls into his embrace.

“I’m real.” He mutters, nibbling at Felix’s ear in a playful manner that still somehow makes the younger man’s breath hitch. “That was real.” He snakes his hand around Felix’s abdomen and comes to rest it on top of his heartbeat once more. “I’m never letting you go again.” 

Felix believes him, believes in the reality of the solid weight of Sylvain’s chest breathing evenly in tandem behind him. He releases the anxiety in a small soft whine, pulling Sylvain closer around him. 

“I trust you.”

Sylvain laughs and nuzzles at Felix’s damp and knotted hair. “That’s something I thought I’d never hear.” He turns him over so that they’re facing one another. “I’m gonna need another shower.” He wiggles his eyebrows at Felix. “Wanna join me?”

Felix huffs and moves Sylvain’s arm off of him. “We literally just had sex.” 

“You’re not up for a second round?”

Felix is up for a second round. And a third, a fourth, and a fifth. But he doesn’t need to tell Sylvain that and risk them never leaving the apartment again. So he sidesteps the question somewhat. 

“Perhaps. Later, after we get your keys and your wallet back.” 

Sylvain shoots straight up, recollection replacing perversion on his face. “Shit!” He groans, and rubs at his eye sockets. “I forgot about that.” 

“…Idiot.” 

Sylvain looks down at him with a dopey eyed expression, the same grin on his face that Felix saw for the first time on that nineteenth day of first grade. “Yeah, but I’m _your_ idiot now.”

“So you are, Sylvain.” Felix returns the smile. “So you are.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I am on [twitter](http://twitter.com/thefriedpipes)! Come talk more about fe3h with me. 🤗


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